PBS special hails Jewish B-way legacy

Saturday

Dec 29, 2012 at 6:00 AMDec 29, 2012 at 9:06 AM

Jules Becker CORRESPONDENT

Albert M. Tapper was virtually born to produce “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy.”

As the 65-year-old Jewish Worcester-born and bred composer (who divides his time between Cape Cod, Boca Raton and especially Manhattan) recently said, “I’ve been writing music my whole life. I walk by a piano and I have to stop and at least say ‘hello.’ ”

The Classical High School alumnus fondly remembered his father, Louis Tapper, as an amateur songwriter in his own right. In fact, Tapper has written Off-Broadway musicals (including “Sessions” and “National Pastime”) — and even “Worcester,” a song he called “a valentine” to his native city.

“I was always aware that 95 percent of the great Broadway composers were Jewish,” he admitted. About a year and a half ago, fellow composer Barbara Brilliant called Tapper about making a documentary about that musical dominance. “I felt it was very important to do this movie,” he said. “It was a great shidduch (Yiddish and Hebrew for ‘a match,’)” he observed, with the result “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy,” which begins airing Jan. 1 as part of the PBS series “Great Performances.”

Joining executive producer Brilliant and Tapper — who had earlier produced “Broadway: The Golden Age” ( PBS, 2004) — was filmmaker Michael Kantor, who had previously directed “Broadway: The American Musical” (PBS, 2004). Brilliant and Tapper handled the responsibility known in film credits as “location” — providing places for interviews with composers such as Jerry Herman (“Milk and Honey”), Charles Strouse (“Annie”), Maurie Yeston (“Grand Hotel”), Stephen Sondheim (“A Little Night Music”) and Steven Schwartz (“Wicked”). “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy” is entertaining, informative and often quite moving. Stretching from early 20th century efforts to such recent fare as “The Producers” and “Wicked,” Michael Kantor’s thoughtful film makes a strong case for the predominance of Jewish authors and especially Jewish composers. Even Cole Porter, the great non-Jewish talent in American musical history, is shown to try to incorporate Jewish elements in some of the songs in his “Kiss Me Kate.”

As conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, grandson of Yiddish theater legend Boris Thomashevsky explains, early Lower East Side shows were meant to both amuse and instruct. If Yiddish theater seemed to embrace Yiddishkeit (strong Jewishness), it would reject such Broadway pioneers as George and Ira Gershwin as too American.

Yet, as Kantor’s insightful documentary notes, Gershwin and other major American Jewish musical composers would incorporate Jewish elements in their work. As music critic Josh Kun observes, the beginning of Gershwin’s “It Ain’t Necessarily So” in “Porgy and Bess” recalls the beginning of the first Torah blessing with striking chutzpah. Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” has moments when it sounds like the beginning of the Amidah, the standing prayer in Jewish service.

“Fiddler on the Roof” (1964) looms as a turning point for American musicals — one that “opened the door to Jewish themed shows.” Tellingly Kantor contrasts the pogrom on stage at Motel and Tzeitel’s wedding with the actual pogrom that immigrant Irving Berlin and his family had suffered in Russia.

This kind of historical contrast between past and present or real and theatrical is one of the strongest assets of Kantor’s documentary. Emigrating German-Jewish composer Kurt Weil’s wife Lotte Lenya is seen in the powerfully disturbing John Kander-Fred Ebb 1967 musical “Cabaret”— which focused on the rise of the Third Reich.

Is the American musical a jewel in the American cultural crown alongside jazz? “Broadway Musicals: a Jewish Legacy” makes an ironclad and absorbing case for that contention and the centrality of Jewish talents on Broadway.

Tapper, the son of a Polish father and a Lithuanian mother, found substantive roots for this centrality in Eastern European music. “If you listen to the music (Broadway music),you hear Eastern European melodies like Tchaikovsky,” he said. “You hear great cantorial music or great Russian music.” As examples of influenced composers, he offered Maurie Yeston and Irving Berlin, both sons of cantors.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.